Will Siegal Soothe Times Egos? - July 31, 2003

Big news from inside the
Times: The appointment effective Wednesday of Bill Keller as executive editor
and the concurrent release of a report on the papers recent woes. The so-called
Siegal Report,
named after assistant managing editor Al Siegal, who led the task force, aims to
determine when, where, how and why our newsrooms culture, organization
processes and actions led to a failure of our journalism in the wake of the
Jayson
Blair and
Rick
Bragg controversies.

The big news is that Bill
Keller plans to name a public editor (an ombudsman) by early fall, to deal with
reader complaints and comment on the papers journalistic practices. There are
other interesting tidbits. Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz notes:
Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. told the committee that while he knew there
were anxieties in the newsroom over the harsh management style of former top
editors Howell Raines and Gerald Boyd, the depth of the anger and frustration
'stunned' him. According to the report, Sulzberger said that he should have
been listening harder to the newsroom and that I blame myself for that.

The report also examines
the culture of the newsroom. Among its recommendations: Reward courtesy and
collegiality and penalize rudeness and No job should require unreasonable
working hours under normal news circumstances, perhaps a slap at the Howell
Raines efforts to raise the metabolism of what he considered a culture of
complacency. The paper also asserts the Blair imbroglio was an aberration and
cautioned the paper must prevent the journalistic failings of one young
African-American from legitimizing a backlash in our newsroom against minority
journalists in general.

The Jayson Blair section
is written by three outside journalists: former Associated Press Chief Executive
Louis Boccardi, former Washington Post ombudsman Joann Byrd and former Times
columnist Roger Wilkins. They cant resist puffing the Times up even as they
lament a series of management and operational breakdowns made it possible for a
junior reporter in his mid-20s to get past one of the most able and
sophisticated newspaper editing networks in the world. But they insist the
papers quest for diversity wasnt the problem: Though diversity considerations
are obviously embedded in the Blair story, they are far from the real culprits
of deeply flawed structures, attitudes and processes. (Jayson Blair himself
declined to be interviewed, citing health reasons.)

The section is hard on
management failures and miscommunication, but downplays the role the diversity
quest played in Blairs continuing to remain in the papers employ, even after
his track record of error and unreliability became widely known to Times
staffers.

The most interesting part
is A Note on Affirmative Action - a statement from Roger Wilkins, the former
Times columnist. Wilkins, a professor at George Mason University, was a senior
fellow at the far-left Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). He told the Boston
Globe in 1991: Reagan was just an ignorant, old guy with old-time bigotry, and
he didn't even know how racist he was.

With that background, one
would expect some red meat, and Wilkins doesnt disappoint, Even in the context
of a sober committee report, his radicalism shows through. After strongly
asserting the need for the Times to pursue diversity aggressively, he notes
the history of America makes it difficult: The Timess recruitment occurs
mainly within the context of the American culture, with all of the extraordinary
freight that it had accumulated in the 400 years since Europeans first set foot
on this continent and encountered the people who already lived here. Essentially
that culture taught that white men were the only people qualified to carry out
the serious business of the world. Even down to the seventh decade of the last
century, that culture was producing many newsrooms across the nation that were
lily-white and all-male.the Times newsroom is an American place and is thus
touched-as are virtually all American places-by our culture, including some
remnants of hostility to minorities and women.

Reading Wilkins, one would
think America is the only place in the world one finds hostility to
minorities-ridiculous, considering what we know about Iraq, Al Qaida and
various anti-Semitic and anti-white enclaves in the Middle East and Africa.
Anyone who finds America hostile toward womens advancement should read
Thursdays
front-page story from Iraq (In Najaf, Justice Can Be Blind but Not
Female).

The Times is staffing up,
naming not one but two managing editors. In a surprise move, the Times says
both Jill Abramson and John M. Geddes were named managing editors of The New
York Times today, effective September 2. Ms. Abramson has been the newspaper's
Washington bureau chief since 2000 and Mr. Geddes has been the newspaper's
deputy managing editor since 1997. The appointments were announced by Bill
Keller, executive editor of The Times.

Abramson is co-author of
the 1994 book "Strange Justice," a biography of Justice Clarence Thomas that
criticized Democrats for not looking hard enough into the sexual proclivities of
Thomas before his confirmation. Among the books errors and gaffes, it quoted a
man named Frederick Cooke as seeing Thomas with a triple-X movie, though later
in the book they note Cooke refused to confirm or deny the allegation.

Lewis writes: At a Rose
Garden news conference today, Mr. Bush used a general question from a reporter
about his views on homosexuality to plunge into the hotly debated issue of gay
marriage and offer reassuring words to many supporters. His response contained
his trademark political mix of an expression of tolerance accompanied by a firm
conservative position on the actual policy.

Lewis also claims:
Pollsters say that public opinion has been gradually shifting, albeit slowly,
toward a more tolerant view of homosexuality. A Gallup Poll in May, asking
whether gay couples should be able to legally form civil unions, giving them
some of the legal rights of married couples, found the public evenly split,
with 49 percent in favor and 49 percent opposed. In February 2002, the
equivalent figures were 53 percent against to 41 percent in favor. A New York
Times/CBS News Poll of 3,092 people, conducted nationwide by telephone from July
13 to 27, found that 55 percent of those interviewed opposed a law that would
allow homosexual couples to marry, giving them the same legal rights as other
married couples, while 40 percent favored it.

But Laurence McQuillan on
Thursday in USA Today notes another recent poll contradicting Lewis contention:
In a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll this week, 57% opposed same-sex civil unions,
the most since the question was first asked in 2000.

For the rest of Neil Lewis story on Bush and gay
marriage,
click here.

George Bush,
Gay Rights,
Neil Lewis,
Polls

Our
Incoherent President

In Thursdays lead editorial, The Presidents News
Conference, the Times argues Bush should have been able to come up with better
responses to two big and obvious questions: why he ordered the invasion of Iraq
and why he pushed for tax cuts that have left the nation sinking into a hopeless
quagmire of debt.

That sentence reinforces
the silly idea that Bushs tax cuts (most of which havent kicked in yet) caused
the current deficit, and not profligate spending, as argued by
Veronique de Rugy and Tad DeHaven of the Cato Institute.

It also enables the Times,
perhaps unconsciously, to put invasion of Iraq and hopeless quagmire in the
same sentence. Didnt they learn anything from correspondent
R.W. Apples humiliation over trying to turn Iraq into another Vietnam?

Thats all before the
editorial takes a cheap shot at Mr. Bushs vague and sometimes nearly
incoherent answers. (In contrast,
Times reporter Richard Stevenson found Bush unruffled and well prepared for
the occasionally sharp questions.)

For the rest of the Times editorial on the nearly
incoherent Bush,
click here.

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